The present invention relates to building construction, and more particularly concerns methods and apparatus for facilitating layout and marking of building wall stud locations.
Building walls in residential construction are commonly formed of two-by-four vertical studs between two-by-four top and bottom plates. In commercial construction, such as highrise office buildings, hotels, hospitals, and industrial complexes, C-shaped metal track is used for top and bottom plates and studs. The studs, whether of two-by-fours, for residential construction, or C-shaped metal track for commercial construction, are secured in vertical positions to the plates or tracks at top and bottom and spaced at fixed distances from one another. For properly spaced and vertical studs, both the top and bottom of each stud must be accurately located. Location of the top and bottom ends of the studs by methods presently used is both time consuming and subject to inaccuracy. Generally a tape measure is laid out along the plate or track, and the person marking a bottom plate or track, will stoop and make the appropriate marks on the plate or track at the selected spacing, such as, for example, sixteen inches, along the tape measure for the entire length of the wall. Sixteen inch spacing is commonly used because plywood and wallboard panels, the most common wall surface materials, are generally four feet in width, and it is desired to have the studs positioned at the edges of the panels, where one panel adjoins an adjacent panel. It is also desired to have intermediate studs evenly spaced. The stooping for marking of a bottom plate or track is difficult and laborious, particularly for long stretches of wall, and tends to introduce marking errors which may accumulate over a long wall. Even more difficult, laborious and time consuming is the marking of the track at the top of a commercial wall, which requires use of a bench or scaffolding to enable the person making the upper stud location marks to frequently mount and dismount to and from the bench or to walk along a higher scaffolding. The need to climb up and down for the overhead marking also entails greater risk of injury. Moreover, the difficulty of securely and fixedly holding a tape measure in place over head without moving it is at least partly the cause of many tape marking errors. Unless both top and bottom plates or upper and lower tracks are precisely and similarly marked, the upper marks will not be vertically in line with the lower marks, and the studs will be out of plumb. With the studs out of plumb, edges of wall panels are not in the center of the studs, resulting in costly errors and improperly installed walls.
Although premarked gummed tape has been suggested, as, for example, in the U.S. Pat. No. 2,187,087, to Leary, such tape has not been widely used because of difficulties in applying the tape at the desired locations. In particular, the required hand application of such tape to an upper track of a metal stud wall, of the type commonly used in commercial construction, would be difficult and time consuming and subject to error. Further, as tape is pulled off the roll, it is under significant tension, which may stretch the tape, resulting in errors accumulating to large amounts over the extent of a wall that may be many tens of feet in length.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for layout of wall studs that avoids o eliminates above-mentioned problems.